Landing a job interview, thanks to LinkedIn!

Eric Kuhn[Ed. noteThis belongs to our series of posts from LinkedIn users featuring tips for recent grads on finding their first job. Eric Kuhn is a senior at Hamilton College as well as a new media consultant, guiding companies on their online and social media strategy]

I had spent my senior and junior year building my profile on LinkedIn. By the time I was ready to start searching for a job, I knew LinkedIn would be a great resource on the hunt. There was one particular company that I had been interested in, but knew no one there. I had asked a bunch of people in person if they had connections to this company, but nothing turned up.  I called their office, sent in a resume. Nada. So I turned to LinkedIn. I remember former LinkedIn CEO Dan Nye telling me at a party once (he graduated from my college so we met at a Hamilton weekend) that there was a redesign of how one could use the search feature on the site. Dan said I could search for companies now and not just people. Brilliant.

So I went to LinkedIn.com and typed in the company I wanted to work for. Sure enough the first person who popped up had a “2nd” by her name (meaning 2nd degree connection). Looked like we had a mutual friend. Intrigued, I pulled up her profile and saw the mutual friend was someone who had graduated from Hamilton two years ago, but I knew him well. I called him up and asked him to connect us. An e-mail was sent out and my resume landed in her in-box.

A week later I walked into a Starbucks in New York City for a job interview. We hit it off and could not stop talking. It was a perfect fit! What had been months searching for an in at this company took 5 minutes on LinkedIn to make an amazing connection.